After a 14-month hiatus, a brand new development team, a project forked then unforked, and literally hundreds of revisions…

We are pleased to announce the release of HandBrake 0.8.5b1 !

This new version of HandBrake encompasses everything that was in MediaFork 0.8.0b1 and much, much, much more.

The complete change set is available and well worth a read (PDF), but here’s a summary for the impatient:

• User presets (Mac)
• AppleTV and PS3 support
• Anamorphic, even in QuickTime
• Surround sound (both AAC 5.1 and Dolby Pro Logic II)
• Chapter markers (QuickTime-style)
• Official support for the Windows GUI
• PPC Linux support
• High profile H.264

A number of bugs have been fixed as well, including the restoration of multiple audio tracks. Still, keep in mind that this is a beta, and no particular level of stability or usability is guaranteed; don’t delete your copy of HandBrake 0.7.1 just yet.

Following the release of MediaFork 0.8.0b1, we were overwhelmed by new users. Fortunately, with them came new coders! A year ago, there were 2 developers. Now, there are over a dozen. Thanks to this happy development, HandBrake’s future is full and bright. So stay tuned: a second beta of 0.8.5 will follow this one, with a number of other exciting features.

Download HandBrake 0.8.5b1 for Mac OSX 10.3.9 or later

Apple Statement

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]

So what does this mean? If you are in the market for a new Mac, maybe because you've got an aging machine that lacks the oomph and the technology to deal with today's highly complex websites, and your needs are rather basic: web, email, music, pictures, etc., you may as well go ahead and buy now. OSX 10.4 Tiger will continue to be supported by Apple, and will have more than enough capability to keep you a happy Mac user for years to come. Just be sure to get at least 1GB of RAM and AppleCare.

This announcement may have a profound effect on the MacPro market. Many of these users are already waiting for Adobe to release Intel-native versions of their applications, not to mention--but to a lesser extent--Microsoft's Office 2008 being months away as well. Leopard being pushed back to October just might cause many of these users to think "well, we've waited this long, what's a few more months?" However, with the frenzied interest in the iPhone as well as strong iPod and consumer Mac sales, this announcement should have little negative effect on the company. Besides, a delay in Leopard's release has been rumored for some time, so this announcement should surprise few.